UN debt expert: Greece can't take more austerity

People line up to withdraw
money from a bank machine in central Athens, Friday, July 3,
2015.AP Photo/Emilio
Morenatti

Greece cannot take any more austerity as it will cause more
social unrest and lessen the chance of an economic recovery,
a United Nations debt expert said on Monday.

Greeks overwhelmingly rejected conditions of a rescue package
from creditors on Sunday, throwing the future of the
country's euro zone membership into further doubt and
deepening a standoff with lenders.

Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, the U.N. Independent Expert on Foreign
Debt, told reporters in Beijing that Greece's creditors in the
European Union should have paid more attention to what
international law says on the matter of debt.

"I have the impression that the EU had forgotten that
international human rights law plays and should play a key role
in finance. The international community attaches great importance
to the interlinks between human rights and finance," said
Bohoslavsky, who operates under the auspices of the U.N.'s High
Commissioner for Human Rights.

"The message here is that if the parties involved in the Greek
tragedy paid more serious attention to what human rights law has
to say, everything would be easier, for the Greek population
particularly," he added.

Alexis Tsipras, the head
of Greece's leftist SYRIZA party, waves at supporters during a
pre-election rally in Athens June 14, 2012.REUTERS/Yorgos Karahalis

Bohoslavsky said the austerity
demanded of Greece had not worked, adding he will
visit Greece later in the year.

"It's very clear the message from the Greek population - no more
austerity measures. Actually if you look at the figures,
austerity measures didn't really help the country to recover."

In a separate statement, Bohoslavsky said he was concerned at
reports of food and medicine shortages, and that he was asking to
meet EU officials to remind them of their human rights
obligations to Greece.

Bohoslavsky, visiting at the invitation of China's government, said he carried a message of
the need for human rights to be considered in global lending,
something important for China which is setting up two
new multilateral lenders - the Asian Infrastructure Investment
Bank and the New Development Bank.

"A narrow idea of efficiency in which human rights plays a
limited role should not find its way into these two banks," he
said.

China has promised that the infrastructure bank will follow
global best practices in transparency and governance.

Rights groups often
criticiseChinafor
its "no-strings" loans to countries, especially in Africa, for
encouraging corruption and abuses with a lack of
oversight.

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